1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to point cloud editing systems and methods, and more particularly, is related to a system and method for filtering point clouds via a computer aided verification (CAV) tool.
2. Description of Related Art
Product quality has long been one of the most important factors in maintaining a manufacturing enterprise's competitiveness. Improving the quality of products is an important ongoing pursuit of an enterprise. It is essential to verify the correctness and accuracy of components of various assembled products. With more and more manufactured products becoming increasingly complex, the burden of verification is increasing too. There is now a burgeoning need to verify components of products rapidly and precisely. Nevertheless, many enterprises still perform verification by employing numerous manual tasks and test programs that are non-standard. This can slow down output, and can seriously affect the accuracy and consistency of the verification performed.
In recent years, with the performance of computer hardware and software continually improving and with the prices of such equipment becoming more competitive, computers play a major role in the process of verification. Computer equipment can greatly improve the efficiency and accuracy of verification. This can be done by using a scan apparatus to scan an object to be verified, in order to obtain a plurality of discrete points commonly called a point cloud. The point cloud can be inputted to the computer to form a digitalized figure of the object. The object will be verified by analyzing and processing the point cloud data by executing particular software. The art of analyzing and processing data on an object is disclosed in patents such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,738,727, entitled System and Methods for Analyzing and Processing data on an object. This invention can automatically measure the object and help to guide production by comparing the measurement data with the design data. The system comprises an automatic scanning and measuring sub-system for obtaining point cloud data by scanning the object and generating measurement data on the object by processing the point cloud data.
Even though the system discloses how to obtain point cloud data, there are many redundant points mixed in the point cloud, which would influence the processing speed and accuracy of the point cloud data. Current technology does not teach how to filter the redundant points automatically and user always has to filter them manually.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method for filtering cloud points, which is capable of filtering the cloud points automatically and accurately.